"Not quite. As a last resource Lord Storndale consulted me, and intrusted me with a painful task. He requested me to call upon you and represent the matter in the plainest terms, which I have endeavored to do, omitting or concealing no single incident of the unhappy affair. I am deputed to ask you to take a course with your daughter similar to that he has taken with his son--that is, to absolutely forbid the union. The young gentleman is in a state of extreme pecuniary embarrassment, and it is possible--I do not state it as a fact, but merely as a presumption--that he reckons upon your aid to settle with his creditors. When he finds that this aid will not be forthcoming, and that he cannot depend upon your making a suitable settlement upon your daughter, he is not unlikely, for prudential reasons, to beat a retreat. A good end will thus be served, and much future misery averted. You will gather from what I have said that I do not believe the Honorable Percy Storndale possesses qualities which would make your daughter happy." "You are commissioned to take my answer to Lord Storndale." "I am." "I may trust you to convey that answer as nearly as possible in my own words?" "It shall be my endeavor." "You will tell him, then, that the mission with which he has intrusted you is a surprise to me. Until this day I never heard his name, nor until this day have I heard the name of his son. Never before, to my knowledge, has my daughter concealed anything from me or from her mother, and I need not say that what you have revealed is a grief to me, and will be to her mother if it comes to her ears. That our daughter must have been under the spell of some powerful influence to induce her to keep us in ignorance of what was passing between her and your client's son is in my judgment indisputable, and the inference is that this influence has been exercised by the young man, who must have bound her by a solemn promise to say nothing of the attentions he has paid to her. I have no hesitation in declaring that no honorable man would have acted in a manner so clandestine and secret, and you will inform Lord Storndale that in my opinion his son is not a man of honor. A young girl's trustfulness and innocence should be her safeguard, but here they have been basely used by a man who, according to your own statement, by his external accomplishments has unhappily attracted her. It has not been concealed from us that our daughter has mixed a little in society outside our special family circle, for in her participation of these, as I hoped, harmless pleasures she had generally been accompanied by her mother, who, I grieve to say, is blind.